


Mando Angulóceyë

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dungeons & Dragons References, Edain create the best games, Fluff and Humor, Games, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 02:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19141834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: Balan invites Findarato and several of the people of Nargothrond to try a game created by his people.





	Mando Angulóceyë

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to Erlkoenig - a wonderful human being, friend, writer, and DM all at once, among others! Just a little something to commemorate the day, and hope you have an amazing year ahead of you!

_Bëor the Old_. Balan has heard what the elven folk of Findaráto’s hidden kingdom call him, and most days the epithet just drives him to shake his head and sigh. He is not that old, is he, either by their measures or his own people’s – he has seen just over half a century, and his form is as hale now as it was when he first came to Nargothrond, swearing his allegiance to Findaráto.

But. That being said. Looking out over a table of elven folk, most jabbering excitedly and none paying him the slightest attention as they gossip and scramble to secure good spots, Balan feels every year of the age they impute to him. Why, aren’t even the youngest of these wise, experienced creatures so many centuries his senior?

And yet. There is something familiar about their excitement to be trying something new and exciting, and that point of similarity with Balan’s own people is refreshing after so long seeing Findaráto’s folk as distant, alien creatures. And even as he shakes his head at their racket, Balan feels a sudden, almost unaccountable fondness for these near strangers – a fondness much like the one he has always had for his own sons, his own people, whenever they gathered around an evening’s fire for the same purpose as Findaráto, his highest-ranking people, and his guests do now.  

Incredible, how a game – or even the rumor of one – will bring folk together this way.

It is just as he thinks this that Findaráto catches his eye, and Balan hastens to school away the indulgent expression that he must be wearing as he watches them all. But it is too late, and Findaráto’s gaze is too keen – the king of Nargothrond rises from his seat to clap his hands and call for quiet, and a hush descends upon the handful of folk invited to join them this warm summer evening.

“By the look upon his face, I think we have tested our game master long enough,” Findaráto tells those assembled, as innocently as if he had not just been one of those jostling for a place and speculating about what this Mannish spectacle will entail. Balan just manages to swallow a snort before Findaráto is looking away from the folk he’s gathered and back to Balan himself. “So! Are we ready to begin?”

“I believe so,” Balan tells him, amused, and Findaráto offers him a blissful smile as he drops back into his seat, immediately elbowing Artaresto away and leaning forward as if ready to retain every word.

This calm will not last – it never does – but Balan resolves to enjoy the full attention and interest while he can.

He begins at the beginning. For this game, every player will fix in their minds an _óma_ – a voice and a spirit that are not their own, but that while the game lasts, each player will only act as if they are. Once each player has their _óma_ , that pretend and second self, Balan will start to tell them a story, and each player will decide how their _óma_ acts within this story. How the story proceeds is up to what the players decide their _ómas_ will do.

It is the simplest of explanations for this Mannish game, but already Balan can hear the murmurs, see the lifted brows, feel the shift in the air of the room. His listeners seem intrigued rather than bored, and there is not a single look of recognition among them, though Finduilas does ask: “So, is it a play, then?”

Balan nods toward the princess, appreciating the intuitive question. “Not exactly, for with a play, the lines and the _ómas_ have already been made for us. But here? We make our own _ómas_ , and we decide and deliver our lines as we go.”

Finduilas leans back nodding, her eyes already alight with possibility, and Balan suspects that she will prove to be one of his better players. And as the others fall back to whispering about the connection he’s just drawn, Balan feels a stab of satisfaction at this proof that here at last is one place where finally the elves have not preceded Men. This mode of storytelling has come from them!

Aglow in this realization, Balan makes the novice mistake of asking whether there are any further questions before he proceeds.

“Nope!” Findaráto says happily, already tugging a sheet of parchment towards himself from the center of the table and beginning to cover it in that beautiful script that Balan cannot hope to read.

“What are you doing, my lord?” Balan has to ask.

“I,” Findaráto declares, head bent over the parchment, “shall be a fey prince. A prince who has built himself a kingdom of fern and rose, a kingdom that lies beneath this world and cannot be accessed save by those who brave the bridge into his domain!” Every word is punctuated by the scratch and scrape of his quill.

And so it begins, Balan notes, his elation already being tempered by the usual dose of amused exasperation and resignation. Findaráto speaks of himself rather than an _óma_ , and Balan can already tell that he has found one of his most enthusiastic players, if perhaps not one of his best.

Nargothrond has no such bridge as Findaráto is describing – and praise the ancestors of Men for that, because a bridge would leave the kingdom far too open to attack – while the city itself is hewn from stone, but otherwise, the rest of this description of Findarato’s supposed _óma_. . .

Why, Balan is blessed to wake up beside just one such prince every morning.

Which means. . .

“My king,” he tries, gently. “One of the greatest points of this game is that you can step beyond what you know. Can try and think as others might. Can pretend to travel places and solve riddles as someone other than yourself!”

Findaráto looks up from the parchment long enough to grin at him, unabashed. “But what if he isn’t a well-behaved prince, eh? What if he sets the riddles instead of solving them?”

 Balan can feel a headache coming on, and this is only the first _óma_ he’s heard from this table, though Findaráto’s folk are beginning to whisper again upon hearing what their king has decided to do. “My king, he still – well, he still sounds very much like you. Will you not try something even a little different? You have all the lines of the One’s children in the world to choose from and you will truly go for someone just like you?”

Findaráto grins again, even more smug somehow, as he bends his head back to his task, and Balan knows that he is lost. He cannot resist that expression, even when he knows that Findaráto will certainly cause mayhem down the line. “I thought you said that _fey_ are different from _elves_ in this game, Balan!” Findaráto tells him happily, his light tongue tripping over the Mannish words that Balan is coming to suspect were actually created to describe his kind, and Balan can only shake his head.

“Fine, fine. May I finish the rest now?”

Findaráto nods, magnanimous, and continues scribbling away as Balan outlines the other important elements of play. To an enraptured table he explains that there are many peoples they may choose among for their _óma_ – Men, elves, a short creature called the _perian,_ the very _uruk_ that the elves so often fight, small _angulócë_ that walk upright like Men, demon-like _tiefl,_ and a half-cat, half-deer _firbolg._ This done, Balan explains that once they’ve chosen a people, each player chooses a walk of life that their _óma_ will have come from – wanderer, hermit, scholar, noble – and a trade that they ply, such as a fighter, a bard, or a woodsman.

Hearing these options, Findaráto’s face lights and he immediately begins scribbling faster – Balan has no doubt that his king’s _óma_ will turn out to have a great love for plants, a history avoiding war, and a family with whom he is not always on the best of terms. Mentally, Balan is already planning ways to make this backstory – well, even more interesting. Perhaps the betrayal of a close family member, or some intrigue that the prince could not politic his way out of.

And of course, he should have expected that Findaráto would not be the only one to stick with a story so similar to his own.

“An elven soldier,” grunts Edrahil, Findaráto’s grim-faced chief of the guard.

“You are not even trying,” Findaráto tell his guardsman lightly, still scribbling away, but Balan just sighs and waves Edrahil on. It’s not worth fighting over, and it just means that there’s another backstory Balan will get to imagine a twist for – ohohoho, perhaps Edrahil’s soldier was betrayed by Findaráto’s prince. . . Balan cannot say that he isn’t enjoying thinking about how Edrahil will slowly come to understand that he controls only his own _óma_ , not Findaráto’s and certainly not the story as a whole.

His other new players surprise Balan, though. Finduilas immediately announces that she will play a _tiefl_ bard, and her friend Irissë - another elven princess, this one visiting from a second hidden kingdom, Ondolindë – laughs and goes a step further, deciding that her _óma_ will be an _uruk_ librarian. These choices draw raised eyebrows from the king’s brother, Artaresto, who settles on a fey hunter with double swords, and the entire table is in raptures when Gwindor determines to be a _perian_ sailor.

Findaráto comes out of his scribbling daze to shouts of laughter. “What?” he demands, only for his kinswomen to pounce on him and demand he think up a different _óma_. “But I like this one!” he complains, though he listens with great enjoyment to the princesses’ ideas and immediately agrees that Gwindor’s sailor is the best _óma_ at their table. The princess Irissë in particular wants to know who Balan himself will be in this game, but Balan just laughs and explains that she will have to wait and find out – perhaps he will be a hidden lord or the god of un-death and braided bread, she will just have to wait and see! She subsides with a raised eyebrow, and goes back to plotting with Finduilas, but Balan takes great satisfaction in the way that she doesn’t yet realize that he’s actually told her the truth.

There is still more to go through before the game itself begins – Balan must explain how each _óma_ has different abilities that will come out in battle and upon the road – but for now it is enough to sit back and listen as these elven high folk are revealed to be so much like Balan’s own people. The promise of a game like this has the king and the first advisor of Nargothrond practicing stage voices, has the princesses of two kingdoms conspiring how they will win fame and renown, has a young lord trying to draw out the taciturn chief guardsman – all so much like Balan’s own sons always laughed and schemed whenever he promised to play this game with them.

So Balan simply sits back and lets the chatter wash over him, watching and listening to his latest table become immersed in a story they will all tell together.

**Author's Note:**

> some language notes!  
> \- "perian" for hobbits, "uruk" for orc, and "angulócë" for dragon(born) are Quenya, while "tiefl"(ing) and "firbolg" most definitely are not  
> \- "óma" is voice, because I couldn't just keep saying "character" for some reason  
> \- . . . this title is my best attempt at rendering _Dungeons and Dragons_ in Quenya


End file.
